“Where’s that?”
“West of the river and the center of town. There’s a streetcar route not far from there.”
Maddox squeezed her hand. “I’ll find you.”
The wheel lowered the car on its third and last revolution of their ride. Katya tried to fit in her final thoughts. “One of my housemates may try to steal you away.”
Maddox burst out with guffaws.
“I’m serious. She’s already taken one man from me, although according to your doctrine of fun, he wasn’t the greatest catch a woman could have.”
Maddox scrunched his nose up in sympathy. “One of those stuffy lawyers?”
“A stuffy doctor, but who else can afford to take their dates to the restaurant at Bates House? They say President Lincoln stayed there once.”
“Is that what you want? An expensive dinner?”
Katya relaxed beside him. “No. I think tea or coffee with you would be just fine.”
Maddox kissed Katya gently, and the wheel turned until their car rested above the platform. Heinz unbuckled them, and they walked out of the Warden wheel’s fenced area.
Maddox lingered close to her side. “What do you want to do next?” he asked.
Katya straightened her hat and tried to force her smile to a more professional brightness. “I think we’ve done more than enough for one night. I don’t know that I could survive any more fun today.”
“You don’t want to try the Kaleidoscope?”
“No.”
“Until I call on you, then.” Maddox bent over in a surprisingly graceful, steady bow, lifting his hat off his head in perfect timing.
Katya pulled her shoulders back into a more proper posture. “Yes, until then.”
Katya touched Maddox’s hand briefly as he straightened up and put his hat back on. It tore her heart to walk away when she was just beginning to like him, but they had returned to the ground. The earth followed different rules than the air.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Katya hurried down the steps of the Weekly Boarder into the basement. She steered into the kitchen, almost colliding with Magdalene on the way in. “Is the curling iron ready?”
Mrs. Weeks stood at the stove. She lifted the curling iron away from the fire of the gas burner. “Maybe another minute or two. It hasn’t been on long.” Mrs. Weeks replaced it over the burner.
Katya heard a gentle splashing sound and found Mary cleaning a corner of the floor. “Did something spill?” Katya asked.
Mary glanced over her shoulder. “I dropped a jar of jam, and it broke.”
Mrs. Weeks faced Katya and Magdalene directly. She set a loose fist on her hip. “Why in such a hurry today, Katya? Do you have a date?”
“No, but my curls are falling out, and I want to look my best for work.” Katya unbraided her long, dark hair. She was determined not to mention a word about Maddox to anyone except Magdalene until he showed up at the house for tea.
Magdalene spoke up for the first time since Katya arrived in the room, barely raising her eyes from their thoughtful place on the stove. “No one’s going to outshine you, Kat.”
Katya did not doubt the genuineness of the compliment, but she caught the serious, preoccupied undertone of Magdalene’s words. Katya kept to the subject at hand. “Isolde Neumann shows me up every night,” she grumbled.
Mrs. Weeks turned back to the stove. “Who’s that?”
“Mr. Warden’s rich girlfriend. Her father owns an ornament factory.”
“They’re getting so popular these days. When I was a girl, everyone made their own decorations with whatever we could find.” Mrs. Weeks turned off the gas burner and lifted the curling iron by one of its wooden handles. “Who’s going first? Katya?”
Magdalene gestured Katya ahead of her. Katya took the spare handle, warm despite the wood, and stepped in front of the mirror hung in the kitchen for this very purpose. She squeezed the handles together, letting the spring separate the two lengths of ten-inch metal. She wound a section of her bangs around the round rod and let the other piece relax to pin it in place.
“Don’t you worry, dear,” Mrs. Weeks told Katya. “I’ve seen a lot of women in my time. Few of them were as lovely as you. Even fewer of them remain comely as the years get on.”
Katya swelled with adoration at her mother away from the one who raised her. “Thank you, Mrs. Weeks.”
Mary erupted into a coughing fit in the corner. Katya swiveled away from the mirror to watch Mary hack pitifully into her sleeve.
Mrs. Weeks rushed to her daughter’s side. “Are you all right, Mary?”
Mary nodded, brushing her mother aside with her free arm. “It’s a little dusty back here.”
“Let me clean it up for you.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m almost done.”
Katya returned to the mirror, concentrating on the loosest curls and flattest sections of her hair. The heat left her locks with the frizziness most women’s hair suffered, the flyaway curls Katya expected for her look. “You need to visit the carnival, Mary. I never see you there. Even Lizzie shows up on occasion to flaunt whom she’s seeing.”
“I might,” Mary agreed.
Katya went on as if Mary had protested. “You really should. It’s incredibly fun. There are men everywhere if you’re looking for a husband. The food is delicious. There are games and contests. I bet you could win a dancing contest if you found the right partner.”
In the mirror’s reflection, Mary stood up on the other side of the room. “Perhaps one evening, when the dinner dishes are done, I’ll stop by.”
“Please do. It’d be so nice to see you. It’s always the same people there. Miss Neumann goes to see Mr. Warden, and another woman used to come for the same reason. I haven’t seen her in ages.” Katya looked to Magdalene to back her up and keep the conversation flowing.
Magdalene stared off at the counter in the center of the kitchen. She glanced up, her blonde eyebrows raised in a question.
Katya filled her in. “I said we never see Mr. Warden’s old girlfriend anymore, whoever she was.”
Magdalene nodded.
“Mrs. Weeks,” Katya piped up.
“Yes, dear?” The old woman moved to stand behind her.
“You know, I forgot to bring down a single pin. I’d love to pin my hair back when I get finished.”
Mrs. Weeks patted Katya’s shoulder. “I’ll bring them for you.” She left the kitchen, and the short heels of her boots sounded in a retreating series on the front staircase.
Mary lifted the bucket of cleaning water off the floor with a wheezing breath. “I have to dump this outside.” She ambled out the same doorway, turning right toward the back of the house.
Katya lowered the curling tongs from her face and whirled to face her friend. “What’s going on, Mags? I can tell when you need to talk to me.”
Magdalene stepped closer, setting her hands on the spotless surface of the large counter. “I feel scrutinized when I’m working.”
“That still bothers you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you’re being watched outside the carnival, too?”
“No, it’s only there. It’s always security, or at least, that’s who I think they are. They aren’t dressed in the steampunk style, but it’s always the same people, the same men.”
“And they never speak to you?”
“Never. They never even get in line to order food. I think they’re going to the other stall or bringing their own.”
“Do you think they were given orders not to speak to you?”
“I don’t know.”
If it were true, Katya realized only one person could give those orders.
“Mr. Warden’s onto us,” Magdalene said.
Katya shook her head. It was not improbable, but they had tried so hard to be careful. “If he were, why would he have security watching you instead of me? I’ve only had one security guard speak to me since Mr. Lieber died. I rarely see them. You see them
all the time.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to stop meeting with Mr. Kelly?”
“No,” Magdalene said with certainty.
“I want to help him, too,” Katya assured her. “I want to see Mr. Warden dethroned, but how can we do that when we don’t know how much he knows?”
“You could try to find out.”
“He won’t let me. He won’t tell me anything. Isolde Neumann visits him four or five nights a week. When I asked him about it, he acted cool and aloof. Then he made another pass at me. I don’t want to deal with him anymore.”
“We should tell Mr. Kelly we need a new plan.”
Katya agreed with her, but she heard shoes thumping on the front staircase. She whispered to Magdalene. “We’ll talk to Mr. Kelly. We’ll work it out.”
By the time Mrs. Weeks carried a handful of pins into the kitchen, Katya had rededicated herself to curling her long, thick hair. She shone a sweet smile on Mrs. Weeks and the pins in her wrinkled hands. “Thank you. You’re a gem.” To Magdalene, she promised, “I just need another minute with the iron.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Katya sat in the back of St. John’s Church, realizing the smells there were not so different from those pervading the carnival. When she passed close by a maintenance worker or ride operator, she could smell the sweat and grease on them. The fresh air of summer tried to wash away the oil, soot, and earth, but they remained.
Those were the stenches hanging in the stale air of the sanctuary. The homeless that gathered there for rest and safety carried in dirt and sweat and wet animal funk. Their shoes smeared horse dung across the floor from the streets, where it dried and stunk less oppressively for having lost its moisture. They smelled like kerosene, singed hair, warm skin, and dry cotton.
The longer Katya shifted against the unyielding wood beneath her waiting for Brady, the sorrier she felt for the people stretched out across the pews. As usual, she could not see them. They seemed to spend the early morning hours making up for any sitting, standing, or walking they did during the day. Katya wondered how they did spend their days, if they worked or spent exhausting hours searching for work. She questioned if they had once owned houses and lost them, like Mrs. Lieber had fallen into the danger of doing. They might have had families once. Maybe they had passed away, like Brady’s, or separated through some other tragedy.
Katya dove deeper into her thoughts, adrift in her dark daydreams when Magdalene patted her arm. Looking up, Katya saw that Brady had come in and was sitting down next to Magdalene.
“Do you have news?” he asked, his voice straining, hoping.
“We need a new plan,” Magdalene explained. “Katya isn’t comfortable trying to press Mr. Warden for more information, and I don’t blame her. He’s too smart to let something slip. There has to be another way.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Brady admitted. He lowered his far-off gaze to the floor, his thumbs flipping at the brim of his hat. “What place is more public to expose Warden’s dishonesty than the carnival itself?”
“No,” Katya said, speaking from her gut before her mind could react.
Brady lifted his eyes. “If he’s there every night, it might be our best chance. He can’t hide from us. We could expose him in front of the guests, the workers, even the press if we tipped them off ahead of time.”
“No,” Katya repeated, shaking her head. “The carnival has its problems, but it means so much to everybody. I don’t want it to be destroyed like that. Who could enjoy being there after we defame it by calling Mr. Warden out on its grounds?”
Brady hid his hurt well, but it lingered like pleading shadows in his every feature. “Do you really think it makes that big a difference, Miss Romanova, if we call him out in the city or at the carnival?”
“Yes, I do. It could sabotage everything we’ve worked for if the carnival can’t shake its memory of him. If we expose him in town, people will say, ‘The Steampunk Carnival used to be run by that crook, William Warden.’ But if we do it there, they’ll sneer, ‘The Steampunk Carnival. That’s where they caught William Warden.’ I don’t want it affiliated with such a thing.”
“You don’t think the city will forgive us?”
Katya mulled it over. She wanted to fight taking that risk, but she did not want to tell Brady to give up on everything he had striven for.
“Please, Miss Romanova.” Brady’s eyes shimmered, and his brogue laid itself low. “You’ve come with me this far. If there’s another way, I promise you, we’ll take it. But we have to consider this one.”
Katya made herself nod in agreement.
“The carnival’s bigger than Warden,” Brady said. “It’s bigger than any travesty that happens there.”
“Because Mr. Warden covers them up,” Katya murmured.
“There’s one other thing I wanted to talk to you about.” Brady paused, which made Katya’s nerves tighten like fiddle strings. “If it’s too personal, I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about it. But who’s the young man I’ve seen you with around the carnival? The one who works there?”
Katya adjusted the fit of her gloves minutely, not sure if her discomfort was rooted in embarrassment, fear, or indignation. If Brady had noticed her with Maddox, Mr. Warden’s spies certainly had. “Mr. O’Sullivan replaced one of the maintenance workers Mr. Warden deemed incompetent.”
“How well do you know him?”
“Well enough to call him a friend.”
“Do you remember when he came to work for the carnival?”
“It was around the same time we met you, after you fixed the Beast.”
“It was before Lieber was murdered,” Brady reminded her, tilting his forehead at her.
Katya licked her lips. She wished she had a glass of water for her suddenly dry throat. Her voice rose although she tried to control it. “Are you saying Mr. O’Sullivan could’ve murdered Mr. Lieber?”
“I’m only saying it’s possible. I’m not accusing him.”
“What motive would he have had? It must have been only a week or two before Mr. Lieber was killed. What could Mr. Lieber have done to him in that short a time that would force such a strong reaction? I don’t think Mr. O’Sullivan has that kind of a temper.”
“He’s Irish,” Brady joked in an extra-thick brogue, his expression light to dampen his dark insinuation.
“I’m serious, Mr. Kelly,” Katya told him. “If Mr. Warden’s bent on continuing to manipulate me, Mr. O’Sullivan might be in danger, too. His lot is in with ours, not part of the danger working against us.”
“My apologies, miss. And at the risk of offending you again, I’m afraid I must ask if you’ve told him anything about what we’re planning to do.”
“I haven’t, and I won’t. I wouldn’t betray your trust like that.”
“One last question,” Brady said. “When can I see it? My journal?”
Magdalene cleared her throat. “We can bring it to you at the carnival if you like. It’s not ideal, but it might be a good idea to keep it close at hand in case we have the opportunity to use it as proof against Mr. Warden.”
Brady nodded, slowly at first. His movements picked up speed as he gained a confidence that smoothed his furrowed brow. “I could hide it in the game stall. Behind the stuffed toys and prizes, perhaps.”
“You don’t think security will find it?” Magdalene asked.
“No. As far as Warden knows, the journal and his dirty little secret are long buried. The guards have no reason to tear apart my stall or any of the others.”
“We’ll bring it for you soon.”
“Thank you.” Brady’s hands shook where they rested his hat on his legs. “And no one where you live knows about it?”
“No, Mr. Kelly.” Magdalene watched him for a moment. Her voice treaded gently. “Will you be able to hide it at the carnival and leave it there? I know how badly you must want to take it home and search through it.”
“I do, but I can’
t risk that. It must be in a place where we can use it if we get the chance. I can’t jeopardize our plans and our lives for my selfish obsession.”
Magdalene laid her hand over Brady’s, her white glove making his pale skin look tanned. “You’re not a selfish man. Your reasons for dreaming this carnival are more noble and honorable than most people’s reasons for doing anything. I promise you we’ll act as soon as we can.”
Katya could think of even more urgent reasons to speed up the process. “Tell Mr. Kelly about the security men.”
Magdalene turned her face toward Katya, raising her blonde brows above sharp, warning blue eyes.
Brady leaned forward where Katya could see him better. “Tell me what?”
“There’s no need to worry anyone,” Magdalene insisted.
Katya answered Brady’s question. “Security’s watching her closely.”
Brady sounded serious again. “Do you think Warden suspects something?”
“He can’t,” Magdalene said, offering her lifted palms in defeat. “I haven’t done anything I don’t normally do. I haven’t met with you any more than Katya has. She’s spoken to you more than I have.”
“What does Warden know about you?”
“Nothing he could use against me. He knows I was born in the city. He knows where I used to work as a cook. My family’s very quiet. We work hard, and we stay out of trouble. Usually.”
Brady clasped his hands around Magdalene’s gloved fingers. “If there is trouble, send for me if you can. I’ll be there. I can’t let either of you get hurt because I couldn’t do this alone.”
“We’re glad to help you, Mr. Kelly,” Magdalene assured him, only a slight wavering of her voice giving away her apprehension.
“How can I repay you?”
Katya jumped in with the easy answer. “By keeping us on at the carnival when you take it over.”
“Do you really think anyone will want to elevate me – the Mick – to running the entire carnival?”
Steampunk Carnival (Steam World Book 1) Page 14